Greetings from the Chair

As
I begin my tenth (and final) year as Chair of this department of excellence, I
am struck by what a busy and productive academic year we have just finished,
and what an exciting academic year we are beginning. Colleagues are busy
constantly updating successful courses, introducing new courses, and carrying
out sustained research that leads to publication. Majors are seeking
opportunities for undergraduate research, for no aspect of an undergraduate
education is more intellectually valuable and empowering than independent
research and scholarship, followed by writing it up, undertaken by students
with close faculty supervision. We often think of research as essential in
medicine and the hard sciences (of course, it is), but research is also
essential to the ongoing flow of intellectual creativity in the humanities,
including religious studies. The College of Arts and Sciences has placed a new
and very productive emphasis upon student research, and we are enthusiastically
responding to this initiative.

As
you will notice ("Visiting Professors, 2009-2010"), we have a plethora of
visitors joining us this year. Jacob Goodson is offering courses in religious
ethics, Donald Polaski in Hebrew Bible, Chrystie Flournoy Swiney in Islam, and
Daniel Washburn in Christianity. They bring extremely diverse backgrounds,
though they have in common reputations as outstanding teachers. We are
delighted to have them with us and especially pleased that so many of our
Majors have chosen to study with them.

You
may ask, why is religious studies so important at the university? Perhaps the
first reason is that the university itself has become such a significant site
in American life. It is at the university that millions of young adults pass
through a necessary process of social maturation. But it also here that
students' minds are expanded and shaped, as they encounter bodies of knowledge
and modes of thought previously unknown to them. It is most gratifying as a
teacher to see the startling effects of students' encountering the grand and
sweeping contours of religious civilization and culture. It is as if a new
world is revealed to them. And the result of this exposure is not only to gain
familiarity with the religious experience. Exposure also inculcates in students
the values of diversity and tolerance for religions other than their own. In
this sense, religious studies truly opens minds.

We
welcome and, in fact, rely upon your partnership in the extraordinarily
important work of religious studies at one of America's premier public colleges.
Without your help we cannot achieve our goals.

Sincerely,

Marc
Lee Raphael

Nathan
and Sophia Professor of Judaic Studies and Director of the Program and Minor in
Judaic Studies, and Professor of Religious Studies and Chair, Department of
Religious Studies